Alarmist scientists who predicted that
the North Pole could be "ice free" this summer as a result
of global warming have been embarrassed after it was revealed that Arctic
ice has actually grown by around 30 per cent in the year since August
2007.

Back in June, numerous prominent voices
in the scientific community expressed fears of a mass melting of the
polar ice caps, including David Barber, of the University of Manitoba,
who told National
Geographic Magazine, "We're actually projecting this year that
the North Pole may be free of ice for the first time [in history]."

"This summer's forecast—and
unusual early melting events all around the Arctic—serve as a
dire warning of how quickly the polar regions are being affected by
climate change," adds the article.

In February, Dr. Olav Orheim, head of
the Norwegian International Polar Year Secretariat, told Xinhua,
"If Norway's average temperature this year equals that in 2007,
the ice cap in the Arctic will all melt away, which is highly possible
judging from current conditions."

As per usual, the reality has failed
to match the hype of the climate doomsayers.

According to collated data from the
NASA Marshall Space Flight Center and the University of Illinois, Arctic
ice extent was 30 per cent greater on August 11, 2008 than it was on
the August 12, 2007. This is a conservative estimate based on the map
projection.

Blue pixels represent increased ice coverage over the North Pole in
the year since August 2007.

The video below highlights the differences
between those two dates," reports
The Register. "As you can see, ice has grown in nearly every
direction since last summer - with a large increase in the area north
of Siberia. Also note that the area around the Northwest Passage (west
of Greenland) has seen a significant increase in ice. Some of the islands
in the Canadian Archipelago are surrounded by more ice than they were
during the summer of 1980."

But what of the Antarctic down south?
Figures
tell us that ice coverage in the year since August 2007 has grown
by nearly one million square kilometers.

As The Register article notes, "The
Arctic did not experience the meltdowns forecast by NSIDC and the Norwegian
Polar Year Secretariat. It didn't even come close. Additionally, some
current graphs and press releases from NSIDC seem less than conservative.
There appears to be a consistent pattern of overstatement related to
Arctic ice loss."

A general cooling trend across the planet
is now clearly apparent as sunspot activity, the main driver of climate
change, dwindles to almost nothing.

As
we reported last week, A top observatory that has been measuring
sun cycles for over 200 years predicts that global temperatures will
drop by two degrees over the next two decades as solar activity grinds
to a halt and the planet drastically cools down, potentially heralding
the onset of a new ice age.

While the mass media, Al Gore and politicized bodies
like the IPCC scaremonger about the perils of global warming and demand
the poor and middle class pay CO2 taxes, both hard scientific data and
circumstantial evidence points to a clear cooling trend.

How man-made global warming advocates
will spin this one remains to be seen - maybe they will just continue
to adopt their current tactic by claiming that any geological or weather
event whatsoever, be it hurricanes, earthquakes, droughts or floods,
temperature increase or decrease, and even a 30 per cent growth of the
polar ice cap - is a result of that evil life-giving gas that we exhale
- CO2.